FireWire hard drives

[Paul Higgins]

Hi all,

I'm having some difficulty understanding how to work with FireWire drives in 
YDL.  I need to get some important files transferred to a newer machine 
(iBook G4, YDL 4.1) from my older G3 iBook (YDL 4.0.1).  So I got one of 
those FireWire boxes and put a 250 GB HD in it.  I found this reference 
helpful in getting the drive formatted and creating an ext3 FS on it:

http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Unix/Linux/LINUX_InstallingIEEE1394FireWireHardDriveLinux.shtml

This article says you need to add an entry to /etc/fstab and create a 
directory in /mnt.  According to the YDL site, it's supposed to be simpler 
than that:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/firewire.shtml

The only thing is, I'm a little confused by the message I get when I follow 
the directions from YDL:  

----------------------------------------------------
# tail -f /var/log/messages
Dec 23 15:31:20 localhost udev[30357]: creating device node '/udev/sg0'
Dec 23 15:32:45 localhost kernel: FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
Dec 23 15:32:45 localhost kernel: VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on 
dev sda.
Dec 23 15:34:18 localhost kernel: VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev sda.
Dec 23 15:34:49 localhost kernel: kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 
seconds
Dec 23 15:34:49 localhost kernel: EXT3 FS on sda1, internal journal
Dec 23 15:34:49 localhost kernel: EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered 
data mode.
Dec 23 15:42:59 localhost udev[30464]: removing device node '/udev/sg0'
Dec 23 15:42:59 localhost udev[30482]: removing device node '/udev/sda1'
Dec 23 15:42:59 localhost udev[30493]: removing device node '/udev/sda'
Dec 23 15:53:14 localhost kernel: ieee1394: Error parsing configrom for node 
0-01:102
3
Dec 23 15:53:16 localhost kernel: ieee1394: Error parsing configrom for node 
0-00:102
3
Dec 23 15:53:22 localhost kernel: scsi3 : SCSI emulation for IEEE-1394 SBP-2 
Devices
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: ieee1394: sbp2: Logged into SBP-2 device
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel:   Vendor: Maxtor 6  Model: Y250P0            
Rev:
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      
ANSI SCSI revision: 06
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 490234752 512-byte hdwr 
sectors (251000 MB)
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: drive cache: write through
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: 490234752 512-byte hdwr 
sectors (251000 MB)
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: SCSI device sda: drive cache: write through
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel:  sda: sda1
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi3, channel 0, 
id 0, lun 0
Dec 23 15:53:23 localhost kernel: Attached scsi generic sg0 at scsi3, channel 
0, id 0, lun 0,  type 0
Dec 23 15:53:24 localhost scsi.agent[30582]: disk 
at /devices/pci0002:20/0002:20:0e.0/fw-host0/0050770e100019a5/0050770e100019a5-0/host3/target3:0:0/3:0:0:0
Dec 23 15:53:25 localhost udev[30628]: creating device node '/udev/sda'
Dec 23 15:53:25 localhost udev[30629]: creating device node '/udev/sda1'
Dec 23 15:53:25 localhost udev[30631]: creating device node '/udev/sg0'
------------------------------------------------------

It looks to me like using "sda1" works OK (I can get the drive mounted), 
though I can't seem to figure out how to transfer my KMail folders to the 
FireWire drive in the GUI.  I can do it from the CLI (at least it looks that 
way):

# cp -a -v /home/higg0008/Mail /mnt/firewire

I end up with a locked folder in the GUI, unfortunately, so I have to go back 
to the CLI to view what's in it.  I guess that has to do with the -a option 
("-a" = "archive", preserves all file permissions).  Mainly I want to make 
sure that I'm not hosing my entire KMail directory.  

-PRH